The Boy Must Live

"Before the invasion I was apprehended for my continued interference in the timeline, and my interaction with all of you. As punishment they removed my device. Now I'm no longer able to move through time or do the things that I was able to do. They experimented on me. They called it 'biological reversion.' Now I'm no different from you. Truthfully, it wasn't much of a punishment; I've always held this era in the highest regard."

"What is he?"

"He was born hundreds of years from now. Like all of our kind, he was created in a lab using the genetic material of a designated donor. It was a process that began generations earlier with a discovery on February 20, 2167, by a scientist in Oslo, Norway who was trying to find ways to increase human intelligence. He realized that if he could rewire the portion of the human brain that induces jealousy he could increase cognitive function. Sacrificing emotion for intelligence. This discovery was the catalyst for the creation of the beings that you called Observers. His work carried on, and more and more emotions were seen as roadblocks to higher intelligence. Things like anger, greed, aggression. They were abandoned in the pursuit of intellect. Eventually humanity became so intelligent and efficient they lost perspective of the value of these emotions, not only the negative ones but the positive as well. And soon empathy, compassion, and love became messy distractions, and they, too, were machined out. Without romantic love they developed new reproductive technologies. Early in the boy's maturation the scientists in charge of reproduction realized that his brain had developed differently from the other offspring. To them, he was an anomaly. A defect. I had observed in your time how fathers care for their sons and protected them. It stirred something in me that I could not ignore. I took the boy away and hid him in the past where he would be safe."

"He's your son?"

"(Nods 'yes')"

"We chose this time in history for a reason: a 99.9999% probability that we will succeed."

"The boy had a 0.0001% chance of surviving, yet he did."

"Is there something wrong with you?"

"I am experiencing something that I do not understand. The idea of ending their existence consumes me."

"So how does he fit into the plan?"

"They were right about him, he's an anomaly. He's not less than them, he's more. At first, I thought his abilities were just empathic, but they developed into something greater. I now know that his intellect functions on a level that neither you nor we are capable of understanding. But what's more important: he has the emotions, the compassion, the empathy."

"A hybrid."

"Yes. That moment that I told you about, when scientists first decided to sacrifice human emotion to increase intelligence, that was the turning point in human evolution."

"20th of February, 2167."

"If we can send the boy into the future, to that moment, he can demonstrate to those scientists a different kind of intelligence, an enlightenment that goes beyond knowledge or cognition to something greater. And when they see what he is, when they study him, they will realize all that he is: living proof that they don't have to sacrifice emotion for intelligence. And they will never go down that path."

"And the Observers will never exist. They will never invade."

"That was the plan we were working on before I ambered us."

"I always knew the boy was important but when I realized why, what he was supposed to do, my device had been removed. I'd lost the ability to move through time. So I came to you. That was the plan. We were going to send the boy forward into time."